I love Christmas traditions! The really fun thing is that once you get married and start your own family, you get to continue on with your traditions, find a way to mix you and your spouse's traditions, and make new ones!
This is how we do itttt;;
First of all, looking at Christmas lights! We usually do it any time in the week before Christmas. We get Starbucks or bring hot chocolate or something and go look at lights! Sometimes we seriously look at them for HOURS.
We also do this tradition of the elf thing! My grandma did it to my mom and my mom to us. Now they have like, elf on the shelf and stuff but I got ours from a website. I don't like the elf on the shelf ones. They're cheap looking and I don't like that they're "watching" the kids to reinforce good behavior. The way we did it was that Santa sent an elf to spread Christmas spirit and share the real meaning of Christmas! He always got into mischief and ate candy or soemthing like that... It was always really fun to see if our elf had done anything when I was little, so I can't wait to do that, too!
We also make a Birthday Cake for Jesus... I always loved singing Happy Birthday to Jesus when I was little, and it helps remind of the real meaning of Christmas!
Then on Christmas Eve, the fun begins!
We do the gingerbread house, bake a whole lot of stuff, and make and decorate the cookies for Santa! We'd check Santa's progress on the NORAD tracker... My parents always got us Christmas pajamas, and that's the present we got to open on Christmas Eve! We have done that every Christmas with Bentley and Rafe so far... Even when they were too little to open it theirselves, haha. We set out the cookies and milk for Santa, and then read the kids the Christmas story, which Bentley is curently obsessed with. Then we wake them up to go to church at the late service, at like 11pm. I always did that when I was a kid and it was so magical, and wondering if Santa would know if we were awake and not come to our house yet...
On Christmas morning, I would always wake up SUPER early and run to my parents' room (because their room was on the same floor as all the kids) and we'd jump on their bed and they would make us wait an hour or two... Waiting was the worst, because we weren't allowed to go downstairs and see what Santa had brought! Then when my parents FINALLY got up (after we woke them up a million more times) we would go downstairs! My parents didn't wrap the presents from Santa, which I'm SO glad they didn't. I loved just going downstairs and seeing everything all set up and just going right to it! We'd check it all out, get the stuff out of our stocking, and then open the rest of the gifts from under the tree from our parents and from my other siblings. I plan to do the same with my kids. It's so much more fun when they aren't wrapped, plus you still get to unwrap tons of presents anyway! Then we always eat a huge breakfast, and listen to Christmas music.
This year we're going to my parents' in the morning after we do our own family thing and my sister Ana is coming with her family, so we'll give each other our presents and stuff and kind of have our own Christmas. Then we're going to Levi's mom's for dinner!
My favorite thing about having my own family is just seeing the same things that gave you joy as a child light up your own child's eyes... And making more traditions that someday they'll carry on to their kids, as well!
This post was kind of rambling, sorry! Haha. Just thought I'd share what a typical Christmas is for us!
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